Looking For An Angel

Kenneth Hyche remembers the fireball. He has vague memories of headlights and the high-pitched scream of sirens, but he doesn’t remember much else about that horrific November night in 2008 when in the blink of an eye, his world was flipped upside down. The day he was supposed to die.“I wasn’t supposed to make it,” Kenneth says quietly from a small table inside a coffee shop. The only physical trace of his near-fatal experience is a limp and the white brace just below his left knee. Considering he almost lost that leg, and more importantly, his life, most people would argue that Kenneth got a bargain.Kenneth was born on July 15, 1972, and graduated from Cordova High School in 1990. When the Jasper Walmart Supercenter opened in 1992, Kenneth was hired.While at Walmart, Kenneth began working as a supervisor at Camp Mitnick. His experiences there inspired him to apply with the Jasper Police Department. “Policing had always been in our family,” he says. “My uncle, Benny Hyche, had been a police officer since 1970, so I’d been around it all of my life.” What attracted Kenneth to police work was the opportunity to help young people. “Growing up, I never thought I would be involved in police work, but the more I was around it, especially the kids, and seeing that you could make a difference, I decided to go into it,” he says.In February 1998, Officer Kenneth Hyche slipped on his black Jasper Police Department uniform, badge, and sidearm for the first time, a routine he would repeat almost daily for ten years. “The majority of my time was spent on patrol, working downtown, getting to know everybody,” he says.After five years on the job in uniform, Kenneth was offered undercover work. “I spent a year and a half working undercover narcotics,” he says. “David Trotter and I started the Jasper Police Department Narcotics Unit, and made a couple of really good cases. We worked drug interdiction and traffic stop interdiction. Back when the interstate was just coming in and we started getting traffic there, we made some pretty decent drug busts up on the interstate.”After working deep undercover for almost two years, Kenneth decided to leave the police department in 2006, a move that would take him even deeper underground. “I actually went down into the coal mines for about eight months. Made enough money to get into debt,” he says, his voice tinted with regret. It didn’t take long for Kenneth to realize he wasn't interested in working that deep undercover. “The money was great but it wasn’t for me. I called [Chief]Bobby Cain, and he said yeah, come see me.”Kenneth suited up in uniform once again and returned to duty. Two months later he was promoted to sergeant on the night shift. His career seemed to be on the right track.Then the year 2008 arrived, meek as a lamb—with fangs. He didn’t know it, but Sgt. Kenneth Hyche was about to endure the the most brutal, gut-wrenching, merciless year he’d ever faced, a year rife with physical and emotional injuries, finally culminating in a relentless, bloody, white-knuckle, winner-take-all battle for his own life.The first blow came in February. “Me and my dad were cleaning up a yard up on the lake and I got bitten by a copperhead,” Kenneth says. “I spent twelve hours in the ER, watching my leg swell.”Blow Number Two soon followed. “In May, I found myself being a single father,” he says. By then Kenneth’s attitude on life had taken a dark turn. “I was a very bitter, miserable person; bitter towards people, towards God, and towards life in general.”The stress began to take its toll on Kenneth. “I was on the road to becoming an alcoholic,” he admits. “All this bad stuff had happened, I was blaming everybody else and I turned to alcohol. I was drinking all the time and trying to raise my son. I was drinking Crown Royal every day. I never drank in front of my son, but I was drinking when I got up and when I went to bed. I’ll be honest; I was not a very pleasant person.” Kenneth is not proud of the man he was, but he does not shy away from admitting it. “It’s the truth. The truth will stand when the world’s on fire,” he says.The third blow began a few months later with a routine traffic stop. On the night of November 21st, 2008, two Jasper police officers attempted to pull over a vehicle in the West Jasper area for a broken tail light and a dealer license plate. When one officer tapped on the window of the vehicle, the driver floored the accelerator and took off. Kenneth and his partner, Officer Jordan Beard, were nearby in their patrol car. “We weren’t in the chase,” he says. “We were in the area and were going to where it was. The guy happened to be coming up the street we were on. He swerved over and hit us head-on.”Much of his memory of that night is foggy, but there are fragments that still remain vivid; an image here, a voice or a sound there. He remembers the earth-shattering impact. “I remember a fireball,” Kenneth begins. “I remember seeing headlights. I remember seeing the fire, and the next thing I remember, the car was filled with smoke, which I think was from the airbag gas.”Although critically injured, the first thing Kenneth did was to check on his partner. “I was looking over at Jordan,” he says. “He was conscious at the time, and he said I was unconscious when he looked over at me. I remember hearing sirens.” He recalls being pulled from the car by someone, but is not sure who it was. One thing he has not forgotten is the excruciating pain. “I had a broken hip and broken leg, and I remember screaming. They said I blacked out from the pain. The next thing I remember, one of my best buddies, Jeremy Owens, was over me, telling me that everything was gonna be okay.”Because Kenneth was not expected to survive the crash, police processed the scene with the intent to prosecute the other driver for vehicular homicide. “The troopers actually came out and did all the lasers and radars and measurements because I wasn’t supposed to make it,” he says. “The closing speed was a hundred and twenty-three miles an hour. They actually brought me back twice; once on scene and once in the helicopter.”Kenneth was airlifted by Lifesaver and flown to UAB Hospital. “I remember looking out from the helicopter, and my flight buddy telling me, ‘It’s gonna be alright. I’m gonna give you something to help you.’” He still recalls the moment when he knew he wasn't ready to die. “I remember looking out, looking for an angel and I didn’t see nothing and got scared. And I knew then that I was in for a fight.”UAB doctors placed Kenneth in a drug-induced coma for twelve days in ICU. “It had broken my hip completely in two,” he says. “I had tibia and fibula fractures in my leg. My mom told me they wanted to take my leg. She refused to let that happen.” Although he was in a coma, Kenneth recalls fragments of those twelve days. “I remember bits and pieces. I vaguely remember looking over and seeing pictures of my kids.”Four surgeries later, Kenneth woke up. That’s when things got really interesting.“I woke up and I realized I was in the hospital, and I knew I was hurt,” Kenneth says. “And I remember this elderly black lady came in. She was probably in her sixties, wearing white with some kind of print scrubs, and a hat over her hair. She looked at me and said, ‘I’ve been waiting on you to wake up.’ She came over and she was was petting and loving on me, and she said, ‘I’m gonna wash your hair.’ And I don’t know what she did, but that was the best feeling I’ve ever had, when that lady washed my hair. I cannot explain the feeling. It was beyond ecstasy.”Kenneth never saw the mysterious lady again, and no one else knew who she was. “My mom had never seen her and my mom had been there the whole time,” he says. “She just had that old country ‘It’s gonna be okay, baby’ soothing [demeanor]... When she was massaging my head and washing my hair, it was the absolute best feeling...if I could’ve reached up and kissed her, I’d have kissed her.” He never found out who she was, but he has his own idea. “In my heart, I believe she was my angel.”During all of this, Kenneth’s father Dale was also battling his own health issues. “The day before I had my wreck, I found out that my dad had kidney cancer,” Kenneth says. “He actually had to have a kidney removed at the same time I was in the hospital. Mom was going back and forth to Princeton, taking care of me and my dad.”After being hospitalized for thirty days, Kenneth was released from UAB Hospital on December 21st, his dad’s birthday. When he came home, there was a surprise waiting for him. “I don’t know who, but somebody had submitted my name to one of the radio stations, and they actually bought Christmas for my kids. That was the start of my blessings,” he says.Kenneth moved in with his mom and dad for six months while he was recuperating. The road ahead would be difficult, but he had help. “My dad was healing but he took care of me, getting me food, helping me to the bathroom,” Kenneth says. “My total rehab time was fourteen months. I had to learn everything, from putting my clothes on by myself to walking. It was a very hard fourteen months.”But his blessings didn’t end with Christmas. “I found myself getting blessed more and more during that fourteen months than I ever could have imagined,” Kenneth says. “While I was rehabbing, so many things started falling into place. This lady contacts me, and I found myself falling in love with somebody.” Kenneth’s wife Christy, sitting beside him, flashes a grin. “We had known each other for years. We started talking, things worked out, and she stole my heart.”“Oh my gosh,” Christy giggles.“Then we got married in...when was it?” Kenneth teases her. “This is great. I’ve got a free pass on this one.”“You do this to me every time,” Christy laughs. “July the 8th, 2011.”“And it just keeps getting better,” Kenneth says, taking a more serious tone. “I’m blessed beyond what I should be.”In December 2015, Kenneth’s dad fell and broke a leg, from which he never fully recovered. Then on July 5th of this year, he was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma, the kidney cancer he had survived earlier. He passed away on October 5th. “My dad was a pastor for forty-five years. The eight years that I had from my accident until he passed, I was probably closer to my dad than I was with anybody,” Kenneth says thoughtfully. “He was my best friend.”The Kenneth Hyche before the accident bears little resemblance to the man sitting in the coffee shop with his lovely wife. That year could be called The Year That Changed Kenneth Hyche. “I was humbled. I was blessed,” he says in a low voice. “I am better off now spiritually, emotionally, and financially than I ever have been before. Yeah, it was a traumatic thing that happened, but I was blessed beyond measure. It was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I know now everything is gonna be alright.”If the lady in the hospital was indeed his angel, she must be smiling now. 78